He’s made himself the story, and we shouldn’t have let him.

One of the main stories in world affairs this winter has been the release of 250,000 diplomatic cables by internet whistleblower haven WikiLeaks. But the headlines have not been dominated by the contents; every day, we get a few new stories popping up about how nations really feel about each other when they’re not in public, but none have stole the show. The show has been stolen by WikiLeaks’ enigmatic founder, Julian Assange. After a long, taunting flirtation between Assange and the law, he has been held by British authorities for extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges. I’m not going to attempt to mitigate the seriousness of the charge, because that’s insulting to women who have been sexually assaulted. But we might agree that generally, victims of sexual assault cannot hope that Interpol will issue international warrants to bring their attackers to justice.

So what’s happening with WikiLeaks? Some are apt to call Julian Assange a terrorist, while others aren’t so vitriolic but still uncomforable with what’s going on. I feel there’s three important ways to consider this.

Don’t shoot the messenger

Bad news is not our fault. It’s one of the basic tenets of a good relationship between media and sources–understanding that the effect of bad news is not the fault of the journalist that reported it, it’s the fault of the bad news. Wherever you can prove that a public figure or body believes in or practices something in private that contradicts what it says in public, you publish the hell out of that. It’s not always convenient, but it’s important.

For example, journalists in England have come under fire for how their coverage of FIFA corruption may have impacted the their country’s bid for the 2018 World Cup. First, Sunday Times reporters disguised as USA bid lobbyists filmed FIFA executive council members asking to be paid money (for football in their home country, naturally) in exchange for World Cup votes. Then, days before the vote, BBC’s Panorama added new evidence to an existing controversy, claiming three exco members recieved money from the companies in charge of broadcast rights in the late 90s and adding evidence to existing rumours that FIFA VP Jack Warner sold World Cup tickets to the black market. The Sunday Times allegations resulted in the bans of several, including the two exco members. But despite claims that they realize the media is independant of the English FA, the technically-brilliant English bid finished last with only two votes.

Some people accuse those journalists of being unpatriotic for publishing that information at an inconvenient time. Fuck those people. FIFA are a huge international body that marshals sums of money so large it is impossible to conceptualize them, operates outside the law, and has repeatedly shown no intent to respond to or stamp out corruption. If Jack Warner believes that “Fifa could not have voted for England having been insulted by their media in the worst possible way,” Warner is your enemy, not the media.

When journalists break big stories, it can change history. Not everyone gains from that. Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn wrote this in his club’s programme:

“What I would say to the people who thought it was in the public interest to broadcast that programme a few days before – rather than a few days after – the decision is, ‘Come and explain that to the people of Sunderland’. Come and explain that no new hotels will be built, explain that the infrastructure that was promised and planned can’t be rolled out now and explain what’s happened to the jobs that would have been created’.”

This isn’t fair. If you have the story, you have to seriously consider running with it. England didn’t get the World Cup because FIFA are corrupt motherfuckers, not because journalists published things that were inconvenient, but true.

The reason why WikiLeaks is being criticised and why they are being prosecuted are not the same reason. The technical infrastructure of the Internet isn’t turning its back on them because of the possibly shaky moral ground of publishing human rights cables. It’s because the United States are embarassed, and that’s wrong.

Don’t become the story

But Assange isn’t some sort of angel, either. I will leave aside the always-rumbling-all-the-time debate of whether or not online journalism/new media counts as journalism by adopting a broad interpretation of the term here. Journalists, for the purpose of my analysis, are people who act as proxies for the public, interpreting information, selecting what’s important, and making it available. That includes Wikileaks and Assange.

Good journalism should also judge what’s responsible to post–redacting informants from human rights cables is entirely necessary because that information could destroy the lives of innocents and prevent others from providing the information that proves those injustices in the first place. Wikileaks’ partnership with established papers, who provide that influence, helps, but their track record with protecting identities has not been great.

Mostly, good journalism presents the facts and distances the reporter from the story as much as possible; what’s important is the story, not who told the story or how it was told.

Wikileaks is a part of the most grassroots movement in online journalism–the wiki movement, which crowdsources contribution to create a free, neutral databank of human society’s information–but its behaviour has differed from its larger cousins. Ludicrous personal appeals from Jimmy Wales aside, there is no face to Wikipedia. Regardless of how credibly you view its information, there is no author or editor whose choices uniformly shape Wikipedia’s content, and no public figure embodies the organization.

Contrast this to Wikileaks. One assumes–and before all this started, it was true–that a whistleblower site whose name starts with Wiki would focus around decentralization and anonymity. The model is to publish information for the sake of it–not to attack or out of spite, but because information is what they do, without fear or favour. They succeeded in decentralizing, but all aspects of it are welded to Assange’s public persona–a crusading activist under attack. Wikileaks is always sniping on Twitter, and Assange has defined himself as a crusader against injustice. This weakens the stories, too–the revalations about world officials are secondary in the public eye to Wikileaks’ role in disseminating them. What’s the point of providing the ammunition that forces politicians to answer questions if, like Lawrence Cannon, they just yammer on about how reprehensible the leaks are?

Assange isn’t the first journalist to do this–and he won’t be the last–but he weakens Wikileaks because it’s easier to believe they aren’t attacking America if it doesn’t sometimes look like they actually want to attack. When Assange threatens to unredact cables if he’s arrested, putting the owners of the names in danger, sometimes it’s hard to judge his mindset.

Which illegal activities, exactly?

This, however, is irrelevant. Julian Assange is a bad journalist and potentially morally bankrupt media figure. But America is full of those! How many conservative talking heads have glibly thrown about the idea of assassinating Obama? We don’t seize the internets of people who whip up fear and racist, anti-Islamic sentiment. We don’t freeze Sarah Palin’s assets for saying that Assange deserves the same treatment Osama bin Laden recieves. (Which, although I was criticizing Wikileaks’ twitter earlier, was ultraburned by them: “Sarah Palin says Julian should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden–so he should be safe for at least a decade”)

What is happening to Assange and Wikileaks is outside of legal jurisdiction, and it shows what happens to a person who wants to make a world superpower angry. Mastercard, Paypal, Amazon, DNS services, you name it, they don’t want to let you use their services because you are an enemy of the state. Wikileaks is breaking the law, they say, so they want nothing to do with it.

Which law, exactly? Assange was not entrusted with confidential documents he had to keep secret. By the time the documents got to him, they’re just information–except that the U.S. Espionage Act makes even recieving documents the government believes is sensitive a crime. He’s not even a U.S. citizen. If publishing the contents of the cables is against the law, why can you still go to the New York Times’ website? Or is it just because Assange was the one that made it public? If so, that’s worrying–it is not the legal responsability of unafilliated human beings to keep the secrets of the U.S. government.

Assange may be someone you are uncomfortable defending. You’re not wrong–he violates the ethics of the journalism he often criticizes. But he’s still a journalist, and his persecution–by a country that just announced, cynically, it is holding next year’s World Press Freedom day–should be worrisome to everyone that works in the information business.

Which is everyone, these days.